Judge gives Hargrave 20 years in prison

A north Fayette man was found guilty Wednesday of molesting his 9-year-old niece when she visited his family from Baltimore between June 2005 and October 2006.

Thomas Jackson Hargrave, 22, of Mercedes Trail, maintained his innocence even after the jury conviction. Fayette County Superior Court Judge Christopher C. Edwards sentenced Hargrave to 20 years in prison, adding that the reason for the sentence was so the public could be protected from him.

During the sentencing phase of the trial, after he was found guilty by the jury, Hargrave admitted to a similar indiscretion with the same victim several years ago in Maryland and he owned up to that incident in court this week.

Edwards said that Hargrave previously gave a confession to sheriff’s detectives investigating the incident.

The case was unique because the victim’s mother initially refused to come to Fayette County for the trial and she had to be subpoenaed and arrested in Maryland to insure her appearance.

Edwards noted that no one in the family believed the victim’s account of the allegations. But the jury did.

“Nobody believed your niece. Not her mother, not her father. Nobody. She’d been all alone.”

Edwards said the main question for him to consider in the sentencing phase is: “Is there another (victim) in your future?”

Hargrave added that as to the Fayette allegations, he won’t take responsibility “for what I haven’t done.”

“I didn’t do anything down here,” Hargrave said, noting that he was 16 when the offense in Maryland occurred.

The jury got to see the video of a forensic interview conducted with the victim after she had reported the incident to her mother, who in turn contacted authorities. In the sentencing phase, assistant district attorney Ben Coker aggressively questioned Hargrave.

Coker asked about Hargrave’s statement to police that he didn’t have any girlfriends. Hargrave aggressively shot back: “I don’t have a preference for children ... it was just something I did.”